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%\t present Crisis; 



KEPLY AND APPEAL 



EUROPEAN ADVISERS, 



FROM THE SIXTH EDITION OF 



SLAVERY AND THE REMEDY. 



SAMUEL NOTT. 




BOSTON: 
CROCKER AND BREWSTER, 

47 Washington Street. 

1860. 

Price, sent by Mail, 12 Cents. 



THE PRESENT CRISIS. 



After the Sectional strife which has marked the closing and 
the opening year, it cannot be amiss to ask' attention to the 
Reply axd Appeal to Eukopeax Advisers, prefixed to the 
Sixth Edition of « Slavery and the Remedy." It has, at least, this 
advantage, that the subject is presented on the great principles re- 
quired in a Plea before the Christian and philanthropic world, and 
that these are illustrated by instances, outside of the disturbed cir- 
cle in which we move. 

The principles thus illustrated, are,— The sovereignty of each 
separate State and the limited authority of the United States, re- 
moving the question of slavery in every form from the National 
Legislature ;— The impossibility of any absolute and advantageous 
emancipation of the slaves, and the requirement, therefore, of all 
possible measures for their well-being ;— and, finally, That Sec- 
tional impotence which limits the action of the North to whatever 
aids of wisdom and good-will. 

These principles are more fully discussed in " Slavery and the 
Remedy," already widely circulated, but they cannot be obscure to 
those who shall read only the " Reply and Appeal." It is there- 
fore sent abroad by itself, to the members of the National Legisla- 
ture and to the principal officers of the several State Governments, 
in the hope of promoting the NEW ERA invoked at its close, 
and required no less by the interests of the African race, than by 
the fixed relations of North and South. 



IV 

The necessity of some harmonizing principles in our great Na- 
tional family, was never more manifest and imperious than at the 
beginning of the year 1860. But no principles can effectually har- 
monize, save those which are merciful and just, — giving free scope 
to that " golden rule " which enriches those who ohey it, even more 
than the objects of their self-proportioned good-will. The princi- 
ples of advantageous Union must be at once National and benefi- 
cent ; must unite the two great Sections with due regard to the 
welfare of all classes of the people. 

If such harmonizing principles are discarded, nothing can be 
more fearful than the prospect before us. With Sections so sub- 
stantially equal that no majorities or advantages can give to either 
an available supremacy, and so intimately united and dependant 
that separation is impossible, what else can ensue, but " the misera- 
ble strifes of those whom God has joined together in essential 
equality ?" — so much the more miserable because ruling and part- 
ing are alike impossible — the lasting curse of the European race, 
with only evil to the African, which is the subject of the strife. 

The questions and the dangers wont to be uppermost in the 
public mind, seem to the writer to have no practical bearing — sink 
into utter insignificance, in the real relations of the two Sections to 
each other, and to those who are enslaved. 

The question is not, for instance, whether free labor is more 
profitable than slave labor, now that we have four millions of slaves 
upon our hands, to be supported from the soil ; — and if supported 
from it, of necessity, to labor on if. There is the absolute neces- 
sity of food and raiment and shelter ; and the capital of the coun- 
try cannot otherwise provide for it, than by regular, continuous and 
well-directed labor. The indispensable question now, is, How, 
justly and mercifully, to make the actual labor as available as pos- 
sible, whether in restoring wasted soils, or in bringing virgin soils 
into cultivation ; so as to make the provision as permanent and in- 
creasing as the people to be provided for. If slave labor, from its 
inefficiency, or from its special burdens of infancy, sickness, and old 
age, be less profitable than free labor, neither Capital nor the State, 
is at liberty to make the change to the disadvantage of the present 
laborers, — with no adequate provision for them either at the North 
or the South. 



Neither is it the question, Whether by means of free labor and 
its unlimited supply from the overflowing masses of Europe, the 
North will so surpass the South in wealth and numbers as to have 
the National Government in its hands, and be able to regulate and 
control the South according to its behest ; — but, How shall the 
North and the South dwell together, as co-equal Sections, so as not 
to waste their energies and opportunity, either in cqui-balanced 
impotence or eqni-balanced contention. For, increasing wealth 
and numbers can never annihilate the fertile valleys which extend 
from the remotest North to the remotest South, nor the mineral 
stores which fill their mountain boundaries, nor the rivers which 
bear their products to the ocean, the common highway of both ; 
nor the artificial connections which we have formed, according to 
the prc-arrangements of the Creator; — all making a mutual and 
co-equal inter-dependancc, such as never existed in any Nation of 
the earth, or in any time before. 

'Wealth ! numbers ! the National Government in the hands of 
the North ! The President and triumphant majorities against the 
South! What could these avails? Could they give efficient su- 
premacy over a Section pqui-l>a!anced in fact, if not in form, by the 
fiat of the Omnipotent himself? — If there were all the advantages, 
vainly vaunted on one side and as vainly feared on the other, what 
could they avail in the equipoise, just as truly existing, as when the 
lighter weight has its equal power by means of the longer arm of 
the balance ? Or, to take the illustration of the Body-politic, from 
the ancient fable ; — God has so formed it, member by member and 
organ by organ, in mutual relations and dependance, by which each 
contributes to a healthful whole, so that it would be found as impos- 
sible for the North to rule the South, against its interests and its 
will, as for the hands or feet to debar the stomach from its equal 
place and influence in the whole system — from its full partnership 
in the healthful action and vital power of the rebellious and boast- 
ful limbs themselves. 

And the danger is not, that the Union will be dissolved, and that 
we shall become two adjacent Nations, subject to alternate war and 
peace ; — but, that an indissoluble Union will make more bitter a 
never-ceasing quarrel, without the intervals of peace, and the laws 
of Nations and of honor, which prevent or mitigate the horrors of 
a* 



VI 

inter-national war. Alas ! for the North and the South, if they 
make of the twin brotherhood, which God has given them, " natural 
enemies," without the check of seas between them, of divided lan- 
guage, and the rules of war, as with the two kingdoms thus styled 
from the history of Centuries. 

Neither is it the danger that the " Southern institution," will 
remain and extend itself into new Territories and States with all 
practicable ameliorations ; but, that no Northern or Southern insti- 
tution will arise instead, adequate to the wants of the African race, 
when directly or indirectly emancipated ; — that " black codes," will 
prevail in the North and in the South, excluding them from place 
and opportunity, and rendering their freedom but a name. Alas ! 
for them, if, by our " under-ground rail-roads," our border forays, 
and the " irrepressible conflict of free and slave labor," the increas- 
ing millions shall be freed ; — when the South shall cast forth 
upon the resisting North, and the North shall drive back upon the 
resisting South, crowds upon crowds of Africans, freed, but not 
free ; — with no place allowed for the sole of their foot, with no 
" free soil," from South to North and from ocean to ocean. Alas ! 
for both races, European and African, if the harvest shall become 
ripe ; — if Sectional distrust and hatred shall carry on a general and 
enduring war against the African freed, instead of the partial and 
fitful strife for the African enslaved, which may prove only the 
beginning of our troubles. If we will persist in sowing the wind, 
the time must come, when we shall " reap the whirlwind." 

Wareham, Mass., March 1, 1860. 



ADVERTISEMENT 

TO THE SIXTH EDITION 



This work was first published at the beginning of the 
year 1856. The Presidential Election at the close of that 
year and the Decision of the Supreme Court in the case 
of Dred Scott, gave occasion in the fourth and fifth 
editions for additional illustration of the principles which 
must govern the relations of the African and European 
races in the United States. 

The several editions have been received with so much 
favor by some of the largest slave-holders, and by many 
eminent citizens and statesmen both North and South, as 
to encourage the belief that the work is not unfitted to its 
high purpose of engaging the Slave-holding States in their 
special duty to the African race, and of uniting the Free 
States in the only position for rendering effectual as well 
as acceptable aid. 

With the deepest assurance that its principles and 
methods are such as Christian Philanthropy requires, 



(ay 



IV 



we submit them as the true answer to the rebukes 
and demands of Foreign Societies and the Foreign Press, 
with such preliminary illustrations as European instances 
afford. 

It will be found that we do not object to the interest 
taken in our affairs on the other side the Atlantic. We 
claim only, abroad as at home, that every proposal shall 
duly regard actual conditions and relations — shall seek 
a possible, substantial, and permanent good. He is our 
"neighbor," the wide world over, who even advises the 
"mercy" suited to our need. 



REPLY AND APPEAL. 



The original design of " Slavery and the Remedy " 
was to fix the attention of the people of the United 
States upon the essential points of the question of 
slavery, now that the African race is to be regarded 
as settled in the land. 

In executing this design we distinguished slavery, 
as a fact, from the proposal to enslave. Discarding 
the proposal, but requiring the fact to be treated as a 
fact, with due regard to actual conditions and relations, 
we turned the question from mere abolition and mere 
slavery to the well-being of the enslaved ; and pro- 
posed a Remedial Code, as we believed, suited to the 
case and worthy to satisfy the conscience and philan- 
thropy of the country by its beneficent character and 
tendency. At the same time we asserted the irre- 
sponsibility of the United States as a National Gov- 
ernment, and the responsibility of each separate slave- 
holding State alone ; and that the Free States, indi- 
vidually and socially, had no other obligation in the 
matter but to aid the work of well-being by all possi- 
ble means of wisdom and good will. 

In this edition we extend our design, and offer the 



VI 

principles and methods of this work to the considera- 
tion of those abroad, whose earnest remonstrances 
and appeals demand of the United States the aboli- 
tion of slavery. The letters we receive, and the 
whole expression of the Foreign Press, seem to us 
utterly indiscriminate of facts and proposals — of the 
responsible and the irresponsible — the practicable 
and the impracticable — the advantageous and the 
disadvantageous — the right and the wrong. 

We do not deny to European Philanthropists and 
Christians that right of interference which we have 
claimed for ourselves — the right of Christian good- 
will, which is as wide as the world. a There is no evil 
on the face of the earth, which may not be rightly 
discussed, and for which just relief may not be at- 
tempted by any man on the face of the earth. Man 
to man, may speak for man, under no other restric- 
tion but to speak the words of truth, justice, and 
kindness, and no man or people has the right to gain- 
say." * We object only to the indiscriminate outcry, 
not to the benevolent intention. On the other hand, 
as it was our desire to engage in aid of the best 
measures of well-being our own Northern Philan- 
thropy, so it is now, to engage that of Europe also to 
the same high purpose, both, as we believe, equally 
misdirected, to the injury of the very cause they 
profess to promote. 

No doubt it is too much to assume that the Reme- 
dial Code proposed is absolutely perfect. Yet, with 
all readiness to question the details, we have the 

• Pa-e 47. 



Vll 



utmost confidence in the great principle on which it 
proceeds, of meeting an existing fact as a fact, and not as 
a proposal, and therefore of turning the question from 
abolition to well-being, from the irresponsible to the 
responsible ; of breaking only the bad bonds and re- 
taining the good, both of master and slave, until, the 
word slavery remaining or disappearing, the whole 
condition of Africa in America shall be such as is due 
to a Christian country and a Christian age. We do 
not propose to the responsible States to omit any 
duty to which a true Christian philanthropy calls — 
to cancel in regard to slavery one jot or tittle of the 
golden rule. Whatever ills attach to the African or 
the European race in point of fact, this work adopts 
them no more for the one than for the other ; and 
requires equally for both all possible reliefs and bene- 
fits. It is not therefore to justify any wrong, to 
apologize for any removable evil, that this work is 
now offered to the consideration of our European 
advisers, but to engage their co-operation and influ- 
ence in the work of good will to man required by 
the actual facts of African slavery in the United 
States. To this end we submit some introductory 
illustrations — suited, as we think, to correct their 
mistaken views. 

1. One error of our foreign friends consists in ad- 
dressing their Appeals to the citizens of the United 
States, as if in their National capacity, they were 
responsible for slavery in the several slave-holding 
States, in any other than the general sense, in which 
the Appellants themselves are responsible for the 
social conditions of the several European Nations, or 



vm 

even for American slavery itself. We ask their care- 
ful attention to the argument,* showing who are, in 
the matter of slavery, ordained of God as the " Pow- 
ers that be." Surely they must see that, by the ordi- 
nance of Heaven, the authority in all matters exist- 
ing in 1776, and not transferred to the United States, 
is with each separate State ; precisely as the authority 
of Great Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, or Russia, is 
over the social conditions of each of those nations, and 
not in any Congress of nations, whether temporary 
and special, or fixed and permanent like the Amer- 
ican Union. No majorities in the august assemblies 
of such a Congress would have authority from Him 
by whom " kings reign and princes decree justice," to 
abolish the serfdom of Russia, to restore the lost 
rights of the French Noblesse, to divide the domains 
of the Landholders of Great Britain, and to equalize 
the whole social condition of the high and the low in 
Austria and Prussia. These matters belong, by the 
ordinance of Heaven, to each several nation for itself; 
each has its own separate authority and responsibility. 
Any appeal in regard to them must be made to each 
by itself, and not to the whole as a Congress of Na- 
tions. In like manner the United States are not to 
be appealed to in regard to the social condition of 
the several States existing when their Union was 
formed. The general interests, which their common 
language and peculiar circumstances and an over- 
ruling Providence have enabled them to unite, giving 
them some advantage over adjacent European States 

* Chapters VH. — XII. 



IX 



do not destroy the limits by which God, for wise pur- 
poses, made them separate j give them no authority 
over the original and inherent right of each separate 
sovereignty. 

Besides — if there were the authority of the whole 
over the parts in the matter in question — there is 
lacking the power by which alone authority can have 
vitality. If, as we have asserted and shown* an over- 
ruling Providence has made an equilibrium between 
the slave-holding and the free States — if any sup- 
posable Northern majorities are counterbalanced by 
some compensatory powers of Southern minorities, 
then, any original authority would become nugatory 
by means of equibalanced forces, and all vital au- 
thority would cease. Equity itself can give no au- 
thority to equibalanced impotence ; — can impose 
no duty. 

Of this principle, take the most marked of Euro- 
pean instances ; Great Britain and France. — Is either 
responsible for the social condition of the other ? 
Has either received from the Ruler of nations author- 
ity over the other ; or, if the authority were claimed 
has either the power to overrule the other ? In 
matters of essential equity has either the might, 
which alone could give the right, to overthrow the 
social conditions of the other ? In such a warfare, 
can either acquire the responsibility of conquest ; — 
the right and the duty of the stronger ? Let centu- 
ries of war and blood answer the question which, in 
regard to its own relations, it behooves the New 

* Chapter X. 



World to answer by anticipation — before rival sec- 
tions become "natural enemies," from generation to 
generation. Centuries of blood have given proof to 
all nations and all time, that God constituted Great 
Britain and France, two and not one, with no rightful 
authority and no overruling power in either. The 
Norman conquerors of England became successful 
only by the wisdom of forgetting France and becom- 
ing English. u The Kings of Great Britain, France, 
and Ireland," despite the claims and gifts and wars of 
generations, possessed but the empty title, could nei- 
ther rule nor overrule the kingdom whose name they 
claimed. The strength which God gave them to rule 
their own fair domain, proved itself only impotence 
in the vain attempt to rule the neighboring king- 
dom, which God had made equal to themselves. 
Surely Great Britain is not to be appealed to, to 
abolish any social conditions of France, nor France, 
to abolish any social conditions of Great Britain, for 
God has given to neither nation, authority and power 
to rule and overrule the other — has not given the 
" might " which could make the " right," though the 
equity of the change were as clear as the noon-clay. 

With some differences indeed, but for reasons sub- 
stantially similar, i. e., for lack of original authority 
and for equibalanced impotence, the Northern States 
are not to be appealed to in the matter of Southern 
slavery, neither in the National Congress, nor in any 
other way. Whatever may be the error of the South 
— God has given to the North neither authority nor 
power — has left them no other method but that of 
wise and friendly counsel. Impotence is not respon- 



XI 



sible for the acts of power. The palsied arm has no 
duties. 

2. A second mistake of our Foreign Advisers is, 
the demand for the abolition of slavery on the 
ground of political consistency, in view of the Decla- 
ration of Independence and the Constitution of the 
United States. If we had National authority and 
power, does political consistency require it ? In an- 
swer to this question, let us seek for European illus- 
tration. 

Let then the Documents of English liberty be com- 
pared — the true sources and patterns of our own. 
Did they require, — did they furnish equal immuni- 
ties for all classes of the people, homogeneous though 
they were, without regard to actual conditions, to the 
forms and arrangements which years and ages pre- 
vious had introduced and established ? Did Magna 
Charta, did the Bill of Rights, equalize all orders and 
ranks of men ? Let these documents be considered. 

Magna Charta, then, reclaimed the ancient rights of 
the Barons of England against the encroachments 
of the Crown; — no doubt enabling and requiring 
them to promote the well-being of their serfs, then 
the largest class, the great mass of the people ; but 
neither enabling nor requiring them to abolish serf- 
dom and make their serfs politically and personally 
free, to the injury of both. The Bill of Bights re- 
claimed the ancient rights of the Lords and Commons 
of England against new encroachments of the Crown, 
in like manner enabling and requiring all practicable 
advantages for all classes of the people, but neither 
enabling nor requiring equal suffrage to the entire 



Xll 

mass without distinction ; — left unchanged the 
existing franchises and those relations of property 
and labor which doomed the mass to the actual con- 
dition of " the poor," without a voice in the govern- 
ment of their country. It was never claimed that 
Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights equalized all 
classes of society actually existing at their date. 
These documents went as far as they went and no farther, 
and left all matters unnamed, to the slow progress of 
just principles in promoting the well-being of all 
orders of the people. No doubt there has been 
wrong in not using the powers reclaimed for the well- 
being of the laboring and struggling masses, but it 
was never intended by these documents that all con- 
ditions of society should have one rule and one meas- 
ure of civil liberty. In the language of Macaulay 
with regard to the Bill of Rights, " They made nothing 
law, which had not been law before. . . . Their object 
was to make the restoration of a tyrant impossible, 
and to place upon the throne sovereigns under whom 
law and liberty might be secure " * with all practica- 
ble advantages for all conditions of men. 

In like manner, the Documents of the American 
Revolution — the Declaration of Independence and 
the Constitution of the United States, ivent as far as 
they went and no farther, did what they did and no more ; 
reclaimed English principles for English men, and not 
for the native Indians, or the Africans settled in the 
land, neither of whom had any such principles to re- 
claim, or were prepared to receive and enjoy the 

• Vol. ii. 2, 580, 615. 



xm 



freedom of an English people ; though the ruling 
quality assumed in those documents by the United 
"Englands " of America required from each all possible 
provision for every condition of people in any way 
under their government, whether to regulate their 
freedom or to ameliorate their slavery. These Ameri- 
can documents "made nothing law which was not 
law before ; " and the American Revolution stands 
precisely in the same relation to existing facts, as do 
the two great eras of British liberty — making no 
immediate changes in the relation of any inhabitants 
of the land, and yet containing the elements, and 
therefore the obligation, of progressive improve- 
ment for all. At the time of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, slavery, like serfdom in Great Britain 
eight hundred years ago, existed in every state but 
one ; and slaves remained slaves afterwards, precisely 
as serfs remained serfs after Magna Charta, and 
peasants, peasants after the Bill of Rights, with no 
change whatever, but yet with every claim to be 
cared for by each body politic, as kindness and jus- 
tice might from time to time require. 

If this view be thought inconsistent with the 
broad language of the Declaration of Independence, 
with the equal rights into which all men " are born," 
it needs only to consider the specifications of the Doc- 
ument itself, which are found, not to be the common 
rights of men, as men, but the rights of Englishmen 
as Englishmen — rights brought by the colonists from 
England, and existing by charter and custom, from 
the first. If the specifications are not as broad as the 
general expression, they necessarily limit and explain 
b 



XIV 

it ; can in no way be extended by it to other people, 
and to other matters, than those which are specified. 
If there be a literal inconsistency, it cannot be 
helped, and must find its practical commendation and 
its just issue, not in admitting free Indians and en- 
slaved Africans to the privileges of Englishmen, which 
would be no privileges to them, but in such use of 
the governing power as shall best promote the well- 
being of both. And in regard to it we may adopt 
the language of Macaulay concerning the resolution 
of Parliament which preceded and secured the Bill 
of Rights. " In fact, the one beauty of it was its in- 
consistency." Like that resolution, the Declaration 
stated and secured its great object, if not in perfect 
logical agreement with its general expression, yet in 
perfect consistency with any just view of its broadest 
terms. " Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," 
to which all men are declared entitled, cannot be so 
understood as to interfere with either of the three. 
" Liberty " has " life " and " the pursuit of happiness " 
as its manifest and necessary limitations. The ques- 
tion remains with regard to all men that " are born," 
of all ages, sexes, classes, and conditions — how 
much liberty, in their actual case, does best pro- 
mote and secure these primary and highest purposes. 
To be in any worthy sense equally free, that is, 
with reference to " life " and " the pursuit of hap- 
piness," the various classes and conditions of men 
must be unequally free, strange as the paradox may 
seem. In this sense, men and women, parents and 
children, masters and apprentices, in our own Euro- 
pean population, are equally free. Who shall say 



XV 

that with slavery ameliorated — its bonds to labor 
and maintain labor retained, and its bad bonds re- 
moved — that Southern masters and their African 
slaves may not be equally free, that is, equally en- 
titled to " life " and a the pursuit of happiness." When 
the government shall become truly patriarchal, at 
once in just regulation and in paternal protection, 
it will prove the most perfect freedom* 

3. A third mistake of our Foreign Advisers consists 
in demanding for slavery, as an existing fact, the 
same refusal as for the proposal to enslave. 

No mistake is more plain. Every where and al- 
ways, we must refuse the proposal to change the con- 
dition of our fellow-men from the better to the worse ; 
but this does not require, for it does not enable us to 
change instantly and absolutely the worse for the 
better, to annihilate any or all distinctions on a scale 
of endless variety. Poverty, sickness, wounds, are in 
this respect in the same category as slavery. We 
may accept no proposal to inflict them, but this does 
not require, for it does not enable us to abolish them. 
All that is required, in either case, is to meet the ac- 
tual condition with all kindness and justice, to alle- 
viate all evils, and bestow all benefits, to our utmost 
power. We must refuse utterly and instantly the 
proposal to engage in highway robbery ; but we are 
not therefore required to restore utterly and instantly 
the " man wounded and half dead " to soundness and 
his goods, but only to dress his wounds, provide for 
his wants, and aid his recovery according to our 

* Compare pp. 133, 134. 



XVI 

power. The divine illustration of love to our neigh- 
bor requires no more. 

The impossibility of treating facts, like the pro- 
posal to introduce them, lies, in the very nature of 
things, in the arrangements of the world — embracing 
toils, exposures, sufferings, of exceeding inequality 
from the very heights of wealth down to the deepest 
extremes of poverty and woe. In sober truth, it is 
not man but God, it is not human will but the ordi- 
nance of Heaven, which makes it the necessity of 
every country, and of every age, that existing con- 
ditions should be incapable of instant and absolute 
abolition — should admit only of alleviation and im- 
provement. The necessity is for substance the same 
in Europe and America. The labor must be done at once 
for the livelihood of the laborers themselves — their 
employers and mankind, or all must suffer a severer 
doom than labor and exposure in any form which has 
ever been endured. The mightiest governments of 
earth have their limits ; are not competent to re- 
move social evils, nay, even social abuses, at their 
will ; are restrained to the one work within their 
power, of gradual amelioration — none the less where 
the mass of the people are nominally free, none the 
more where they are enslaved. We proceed to name 
European instances, neither for reproach nor self- 
justification, but to make plain the principles which 
must govern Europe and America alike in dealing 
with great social facts, with existing conditions of 
society. 

Take first the mining of Europe, with all its ex- 
posures and miseries — the work on which all other 



XV11 



work depends, the labor by which all other labor is 
alleviated and aided, at once the severest and the 
most indispensable of the occupations of mankind ; 
without which there can be no provision for multi- 
tudes of men, no ease and comfort of civilized life. 
Mining is an existing fact, an actual institution, doom- 
ing a few, compared with the whole race benefited by 
it, and yet thousands, to the severest labors, expo- 
sures, and sufferings, and incidentally but actually, to 
abuses which call for relief. And yet, it cannot be 
instantly and absolutely abolished, without greater 
evils even to the miners themselves, without damage 
to the whole well-being of the race, without dooming 
the world to a ruin worse than all the toils, expo- 
sures, sufferings, and even abuses of the mines. You 
cannot abolish the miner's lot, unless you can abolish 
God's ordinance when he built the earth and hid in 
its depths the treasures of iron and coal, and silver 
and gold, for the use of countless millions of men, 
— to enable and alleviate their labors, — to limit and 
lessen their exposures and sufferings, to provide more 
abundantly for their wants. You can no more abol- 
ish mining and the miner's lot, than you can level the 
mountains and raise the depths in which the stores 
of ages have been gathered by the hand of the 
Almighty — than you can command to the surface 
the whole material for the instruments with which 
the earth is tilled, and its productions wrought for 
the food, and raiment, and comfort of mankind, and 
for the very coin by which what is thus provided is 
distributed to the families of all nations. All you 
can do is to ameliorate the indispensable lot — to 



XV111 

remove as far and as fast as possible its manifest 
abuses — to make it as easy, as safe, as advantageous 
to the actual miners as the indispensable labor per- 
mits — leaving only the toil, exposure, and suffering 
essential to the lot which God's wise providence has 
ordered. The steam engine, and the safety lamp, 
and the attempts of the British Parliament to correct 
abuses which fill the mind with horror, all indicate 
the amelioration which is possible, and not the abo- 
lition which is impossible. The miners must still be 
left to their lot, in the assurance that nothing which 
Heaven has arranged is without its mercy and its 
lesson, without the axiom made plain to every mind 
of man and taught in every lot — to prosperity in its 
greatest heights, to poverty in its lowest depths, to 
the miners even, in the bowels of the earth. " Surely," 
says the most ancient of all books, " there is a vein 
for the silver, and a place for gold, where they fine 
it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is mol- 
ten out of the stone. . . . There is a path which no 
fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not 
seen. He putteth forth his hand upon the rock ; he 
overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth 
out rivers among the rocks, and his eye seeth every 
precious thing ; he bindeth the floods from overflow- 
ing ; and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light. 
But where shall wisdom be found ? and where is the 
place of understanding ? . . . And unto man he said, 
Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and 
to depart from evil is understanding."* When 

* Job xxviii. 



XIX 

God made it needful that the replenished earth 
should live by mining, he did not birry the miners 
beneath his highest mercy, the best boon of life; 
beneath the reach of all the beatitudes. 

The same necessity — the same paradox of toil, ex- 
posure, and suffering in order to the greatest ease, 
safety, and enjoyment — the same irreversible doom 
of some, at once for their own benefit and the benefit 
of all — the same liability to abuse, and the same 
moral opportunity, — belong to the great mass of 
mankind, occupied in the labors by which men live, 
and for which mining provides the indispensable ma- 
terial ; — the same impossibility of immediate and 
absolute abolition, and even of the abuses at any 
time actual, but not essential to the doom. There 
can be no immediate and absolute abolition of the 
condition of the laboring classes of Europe — of 
" the poor," the " lower classes," the " peasantry," the 
" operatives " — at the best, dependent on scanty 
wages, and at the worst, " suffering masses " outnum- 
bering the means of employment and support. This 
condition of the laborers of Europe is an existing 
fact, to be met in all kindness and justice by indi- 
viduals and governments, as a fact to be regarded, 

— but not as a proposal to be instantly and absolutely 
rejected. Parliaments, Kings, Emperors cannot turn 
great national facts into non-existence — cannot put 
them into mere proposals — can no more emancipate 
u the poor," the " lower classes," the " peasantry," the 
K operatives," the " serfs," of their several governments, 
than they can emancipate the miners from their lot, 

— than they can emancipate the human race from 



XX 

the use of iron, and coal, and silver, and gold, and 
food, and raiment, and house, and home. All they 
can do, is by all the means in their power to alleviate 
the miseries and correct the abuses of every lot. 

Suppose it assumed on our side the Atlantic, 
that the system of small farming and a working 
yeomanry in our Northern States, is the true idea of 
social well-being, and that we require all Europe to 
adopt it — instantly and absolutely to emancipate 
" the poor," to raise to social equality " the lower 
classes," to abolish the poverty of "the masses," to 
divide the wide domains of unenlightened ages, and 
establish every where laborers on their little farms 
after the manner of New England. 

Vain and absurd demand ! as impossible as to re- 
move the mountains ! If it were a proposal to bring 
the New England yeomanry into the condition of the 
European "poor," there would be reason and con- 
science in rejecting it. If Europe had the power, it 
would have no right to force upon us the undesirable 
change, to rob us of our birthright enjoyment — of 
the gift of Providence inherited from our fathers. 
But it is quite another thing to undertake the impos- 
sibility of putting their masses into our condition — 
of changing the doom which Providence has imposed 
as the inheritance from many generations. What 
God has permitted to grow for ages, man has no 
power to change in a day. He may reject the pro- 
posal to plant the seed, but he cannot uproot the 
stern growth of centuries. 

Vain and absurd demand ! The very pattern we 
propose for Europe to follow, only illustrates the im- 



XXI 

possibility of following it. How came that condition 
of the laboring masses in America which is proposed 
as a pattern to the greater masses of Europe ? Came 
it at the instant, at the call of man or by the decree 
of any government on earth, that you should require 
Sovereigns and Parliaments to " charm " it into be in 2: ? 
Rather, did it not require a new world for the theatre 
of a minute experiment, and the slow emigration of 
a medium class, " the siftings of three kingdoms," and 
then the time of two centuries, to establish govern- 
ments, create habits, and form communities capable 
of assimilating and absorbing moderate proportions of 
the European peasantry ? The governments of New 
England, New York, Pennsylvania, the models of the 
North, could not have been instituted at ail, by the 
crowds of European peasants now thronging our 
shores. If their emigration had been rapid at first, 
the New England condition of a working yeomanry 
would never have existed on our continent, nor been 
capable of its present work of assimilation and ab- 
sorption. Even now, there are complaints that they 
come too fast, whether for their advantage or our 
own. What else means our " Americanism," our ob- 
jection to the ingress of these hundreds of thousands 
every year, but our dread of a too rapid increase of 
the European u lower classes ; " — but our acknowledg- 
ment, that a population homogeneous with ourselves 
cannot come instantly into the full inheritance of the 
lot which the providence of two hundred years has 
given us ; that Europe cannot change by decree the 
condition of the masses of her people ; must leave 
them to their inherited doom, with only those allevi- 



XX11 

ations and benefits which kindness and justness can 
bestow — those progressive improvements of which 
they can only plant the seed and cherish the growth. 
The impossibility of annihilating great social facts, 
as the proposal to introduce them might be rejected, 
applies equally to the most despotic and to the most 
republican of the European Powers. The Russian 
Autocrat and the British Parliament are alike impo- 
tent to change the existing conditions of the masses 
of their people. The nobility and the serfs of the 
one, the aristocracy and peasantry, with the middle 
classes, of the other, exist in fixed relations of poverty 
and wealth, neither at the bidding nor the forbidding 
of " the powers that be." The Parliament, were it 
ever so much inclined to benefit the whole people — 
to bless the masses — the Autocrat, with whatever 
wisdom and good will — have their necessary limit 
— are precluded by the circumstances actually exist- 
ing, by the rooted strength of ages, from instant and 
absolute change. There is no power in governments, 
despotic or free, to enrich " the poor," to raise " the 
lower classes," to banish the " misery of the masses," 
to emancipate " the serfs," to change the condition of 
European laborers into that of the working yeomanry 
of New England, as there is to reject any proposal 
to bring the working yeomanry of these States into 
the condition of European serfs and peasants. All 
that can be done, and all that is required, is, accord- 
ing to the abilities of the several governments, and 
the capabilities of the several people, to bestow such 
reliefs and benefits as are possible in the conditions 
actually existing — such as are continually attempted 



XX111 

by the British Parliament for England, Scotland, and 
Wales, and even for Ireland itself, only with a wisdom 
and kindness never to pause until the utmost limits 
of well-being have been reached. The Russian Auto- 
crat can do no more — will find himself hindered or 
baffled in his endeavors, if in his desire for rapid im- 
provement, he transcends the bounds which conditions, 
established by ages, have made as firm as the moun- 
tains. These bounds he may or may not have suf- 
ficiently regarded, in providing for the freedom of 
serfs homogeneous with the higher classes of society. 
Time alone can settle the question whether he have 
retained duly the bonds which make free, and duly 
rejected the freedom which enslaves. There are lim- 
its, on the one side and on the other, to the proposals 
of the Czar. Some bonds are retained upon both mas- 
ters and serfs, no doubt designed to prevent in Russia 
the great evil of* Southern Europe — of masses " mis- 
erably free." In Russia, now, as in all the world 
and in all time, then only can beneficial changes be 
wrought in long established conditions of society, 
when mutual relations and obligations are duly re- 
garded, in view of the whole past conditions of the 
people ; then only can the well-being of its serfs be 
duly provided for, when the mutual dependence of 
property and labor is duly regarded, when bad bonds 
are progressively broken, and good bonds retained 
and strengthened. The nineteenth century, civili- 
zation, Christianity, instead of requiring, forbid the 
immediate and absolute abolition of Russian serf- 
dom — instead of forbidding, require some bonds 
retained upon the existing and long established prop- 



XXIV 



erty of the country; and if so, some bonds on the 
existing and long established labor of the country 
also, that property may be able to fulfil its obliga- 
tions; — while at the same time, there is forbidden 
every abuse and required every possible amelioration 
and advantage for the whole people, whether bond 
or free. 

The impossibility of immediate and absolute change 
in actual social conditions, even in homogeneous Eu- 
rope, has always existed. The Europe that now calls 
upon America to treat the fact of African slavery like 
the proposal to enslave, has given proof for ages, that 
it asks an impossibility. In truth, the existing con- 
ditions of any period of its history, as they were never 
due to the governments of that period, but to previous 
acts and methods which gave them their prevalence, 
so they were out of the power of cotemporary au- 
thority, except by such corrections and ameliorations 
as might grow at length into beneficial substitutes. 
European serfdom was not the infliction of the lords of 
the soil, paramount at any period, but the growth of 
ages; partly from the original barbarian condition, 
partly by conquest and oppression, and partly by 
methods of relief and security to which various expo- 
sures gave rise. Originating with the barbarism of 
the European nations, the low condition of the masses 
might have proved worse, might have continued long- 
er, if feudalism had not intervened with its protecting, 
o-overning, and providing care, as well as its oppres- 
sion; 11 The barbarian starting-points, and the element 

* Guizot, vol. iii. pp. 122, 123. 



XXV 

of conquest and subjugation, are older than Julius 
Caesar who describes them; — even Great Britain 
having been visited by continental conquerors and 
settlers, before the Roman, the Saxon, the Danish, 
and the Norman invasions, by which its enserfed con- 
dition became extended and established — at every 
point, beyond the removal of any cotemporary gov- 
ernments. 

The impossibility thus due to long established 
social conditions and belonging to European serfdom, 
explains the chasm of history in regard to its aboli- 
tion. There is no history, because there could be none. No 
direct, positive, absolute and general emancipation 
was ever made by any decree or succession of de- 
crees of which history could make record ; — the eman- 
cipation, such as it was, being every where only casual 
and incidental, the growth of time and circumstance, 
the only method possible of changing the condition 
of the masses of the people in all countries and 
all times. 

Indeed, whatever condemnation may be due to 
those warlike tribes, the Franks, the Saxons and the 
Normans, who conquered and enserfed the European 
masses, when each new step of serfdom was a pro- 
posal capable of being refused ; — whether a condition 
advancing by conquest and oppression be regarded 
as an unmixed evil, or as a providential method of 
evolving modern industry and civilization from the 
indolence and improvidence of savage life ; — after 
the deed was done, and established relations and con- 
ditions existed, there was no power in European 
monarchs or lords to abolish the actual institution — 



XXVI 

to do more than to correct and ameliorate up to the 
just relations of property and labor. " No great fact, 
no social state makes its appearance complete and at 
once." ::: "The change, great as it was, (in Great 
Britain,) was the effect of gradual development, not of 
demolition and reconstruction. The exorbitant power 
of the Barons was gradually reduced, the condition of 
the peasants gradually elevated. . . . That revolu- 
tion which put an end to property in man, was silently 
and imperceptibly effected."-}* "The evil was mingled 
with the institutions of the country, and required 
much time and successive efforts for its eradication." J 
The impossibility of immediate and absolute change 
is still more manifest in the issues of even this slow 
emancipation, — silently and imperceptibly effected, 
as alone was possible, making it a caution and not a 
pattern, and requiring in all future attempts some 
new method not included in the received idea of 
emancipation and freedom. There is manifest enough 
(on which we have dwelt §) "the misery of the 
masses," indicating that in the slow progress from serf- 
dom there was not a sufficient reservation of mutual 
bonds ; and there were, certainly, for many ages, ex- 
treme social difficulties and disorders, due undoubt- 
edly, in degree, to the premature and indiscreet 
emancipation of lords and serfs — to " too free a free- 
dom." The just view forced itself upon the mind of 
Puffendorf, more than a century ago, in view of evils 

* Guizot, vol. iii. p. 17. f Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 21, 23. 

+ A History of the Poor Law, by Sir George Nicholas, Secretary of the 
Poor Law Board. 

§ See Chapter VI. " European Experiments with Serfdom." 



XXV11 

of which there is history enough. " To he held within 
the limits of slavery which the natural law of support 
prescribes, apart from the cruelty of some masters and 
the rigor of certain laws, — in this, there is no undue 
severity. For this compulsory subjection is compen- 
sated by the advantage of being assured of a liveli- 
hood, whilst hired laborers know not often how to 
subsist, whether for want of being hired or their own 
laziness, which cannot be cured without blows. This 
laziness men have endeavored to remedy, by the 
establishment of workhouses, a sort of prison, to make 
men work, whether they will or no. Some have 
thought, not without reason, that the prohibition of 
slavery among Christian nations, hath chiefly occa- 
sioned that flood of thieving vagrants and sturdy 
beggars which is usually complained of."* The same 
view forces itself upon those who are occupied at the 
present day in the endeavor to remedy the conse- 
quences of ancient mistakes by new legislation. Sir 
George Nicholas, in his elaborate history of the poor 
laws, says : " The change from a state of slavery was 
attended with a certain amount of evil — led to a 
great increase of vagrancy. That there was cause for 
coercive legislation, cannot be denied." He accord- 
ingly refers to the laws of centuries to compel labor 
and to supply the wants of the poor — from Edward 
II. to Elizabeth, ending in those famous poor laws, 
rendered necessary by the condition of society, and 
intended to be equally binding upon property and 
labor, of the one-sided application of which Black- 

* Puffendorf, Book VI. chap. iii. sec. 10. 



XXV111 



stone complains* However lacking history is in 
regard to emancipation from serfdom, there is no lack 
of record of the fearful condition of society which was 
the consequence, when the police and provision of 
serfdom ceased to be compulsory on property and 
labor, and the only remedy men saw was a partial 
restoration of the bonds prematurely broken. Surely 
the abolition of serfdom in Europe, though slow 
enough, was premature and indiscreet, and is not an 
example to be followed, but a caution to be carefully 
regarded; requiring, wherever slavery is found, all 
just bonds retained both on property and labor, — 
some indispensable coercion upon both, in order that 
the functions of both may be duly performed; — 
preventing the idleness and improvidence which a 
premature freedom might give to the laborer, and 
the parsimony and neglect which a premature free- 
dom might give to the employer; — taking before- 
hand the same liberty which in every land the most 
free nations are compelled to take — in requiring 
property to support the poor, and the poor to work 
according to their ability. 

These European instances illustrate the principles 
applicable to both continents alike, and are only the 
more imperative in America on account of wide differ- 
ences in civilization and race. If actual conditions of 
men essentially homogeneous cannot be instantly and 
absolutely abolished, and when abolished by slow de- 
grees and unobserved processes, have furnished in- 
stances of warning and caution instead of encourage* 

* See " Slavery and the Remedy," p. 39. 



XXIX 

ment, how doubly impossible the work, when the 
ruling and the subject races have such remarkable 
differences; — the African not only lower in the social 
scale by direct inheritance from barbarian ancestors, 
but marked by physical characteristics, which always 
distinguish him. No European successes could decide 
in favor of the immediate and absolute emancipation 
of African slaves and American masters. How much 
more is the example withdrawn, and a double im- 
possibility assured by European ill success, even with 
a homogeneous people and emancipation by slow 
degrees. Vagabondage and violence requiring law, 
and law, failing to recover from vagabondage and 
violence — wide-spread pauperism requiring relief, 
and all measures of relief failing to provide for that 
wide-spread pauperism — centuries passed, and still 
showing "miserable masses," which baffle the wisest 
legislation and philanthropy, where the people are 
essentially of one blood — these results of European 
emancipation, all-pervading, long-enduring, and, to all 
human view, irretrievable, — how distinctly and sol- 
emnly clo they forewarn the greater difficulty, the 
more absolute impossibility in the matter of African 
slavery in America, — opening to the view a " misery 
of the masses " of which homogeneous Europe can- 
not furnish a type.* 

* In requiring an ameliorated slavery, instead of instant and absolute free- 
dom for the benefit of the African race, as lower in the social scale, we ab- 
stain, as in the work itself, from any assertion of their natural inferiority, as 
entirely irrelevant to the question ; — assured that the rights of one race over 
another have not been submitted to their own judgment of superiority ; that 
no claim to be " the Celestial Empire " can give Heaven's authority, either to 
enslave or hold in slavery any portion of mankind. We simply take the facts 



XXX 

The difficulties belonging to differences of civiliza- 
tion and race are abundantly set forth in the original 
work,* and in the subsequent Review of the Decision 
of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott. 
There are intrinsic difficulties — there may be also 
unreasonable prejudice ; but both unite in the argu- 
ment against immediate and absolute emancipation, 
for something better than immediate and absolute 
freedom. "The laws which have been passed and 
enforced by the States most exposed to large propor- 
tions of free African population, and the reasons given 
for those laws, show most plainly, that there is not 
'free soil' for the freed African in all our wide Amer- 
ica. With the minutest exceptions, in every town, 
and county, and state, North as well as South, every 
body thinks that the African race, improved though 
they have been, since their emigration, are not en- 
titled to be, in large numbers, part and parcel with the 
Anglo-Saxon race — to be advantageously to them- 
selves or the whole people, parts of the several ' Eng- 
lands' of the new world." 

as they are, without deciding how they might have been, if the circumstances 
of the two races had been interchanged, or how they may become hereafter. 
It is enough for our argument, that the African is less advanced in civilization 
and its adjuncts, even though admitted equally capable of advancement, and 
his actual inferiority were referred entirely to the providential arrangement, 
which fixed his place of habitation on the earth. Dare the European race 
proudly say, that if God had assigned them their place behind the great Afri- 
can Desert and in the depths of the torrid zone, and had given temperate 
Europe to the Negro, with its gulfs, and bays, and rivers, for the easy com- 
munication of civilization and Christianity from their great centres, that the 
Negro of the nineteenth century would not have been the superior, in all that 
can exalt and bless mankind ? Whatever might or might not have been, — 
the barbarism of Central Africa is an actual fact, has been only partially 
removed from the race in the United States, and must be taken into the 
account in any proposals for their well-being. 
* Pages 21, 80, and 129—132. 



XXXI 



If any thing be wanted to intensify the argument 
from the differences of civilization and race, it may be 
had in the words of the great champion* of free soil, 
in his speech on Kansas, in the Senate of the United 
States, March 3, 1858. "Free labor," says the Senator, 
"has at last apprehended its rights, its interests, its 
powers, its destiny, and is organizing itself to assume 
the government of the Kepublic. It will meet you 
every where, in the Territories and out of them, wher- 
ever you may go to extend slavery. It has driven 
you back in California and Kansas. It will invade 
you soon in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, 
and Texas. It will meet you in Arizona, in Central 
America, and even in Cuba. You may, indeed, get a 
start under or near the Tropics, but it will be for a 
short time. Even there, you will found states for free 
labor to maintain and occupy." ..." The in- 
terests of the white race demand the ultimate eman- 
cipation of all men. The white man needs this con- 
tinent to labor on. His head is clear, his arm is 
strong;, and his necessities are fixed. He must and will 
have it." Alas, how extremes meet! The highest 
philanthropy and the deepest cruelty are at one ! 
The demand is for freedom for the African race, and 
yet they are not to have room for the sole of their 
foot ! — there is to be no " free soil for the freed Afri- 
can in all our wide America" ! Surely, there is an 
overruling Providence which turns men's counsels 
against themselves, and makes them to establish what 
they intended to destroy. There is no argument so 

• Hon. W. H. Seward. 



XXX11 



intense against immediate and absolute abolition, and 
in favor of an ameliorated and protecting slavery, as 
is furnished by the expressions and practices of the 
advocates of free soil in the United States. 

The conclusion from European instances — more 
decisive in view of differences of race — is required 
by the whole history of mankind ; an immediate and 
absolute abolition of a great social institution has 
never occurred since the world began: — rather, never 
but once, and then, under such conditions as make the 
impossibility only the more plain, when it is proposed as 
the mere work of man under the common providence 
of God : once, and once only ; — the exception proving 
the rule, by which the most powerful nations must 
needs govern themselves in their undertakings for 
the masses of their people. It was only by the strong 
hand and outstretched arm of the Almighty, over- 
ruling the universal laws which govern human 
things, that the threefold impossibility was accom- 
plished in favor of the tribes of Israel instantly and 
absolutely released from Egyptian bondage. Miracles 
from heaven delivered them from the power which 
held them in slavery — miracles opened their path 
through the sea, and fed, and clothed, and governed, 
and taught, and disciplined them, forty years in the 
wilderness, until a new generation was prepared for 
settlement in the promised land : and miracles pre- 
pared for them their final habitation, giving them 
houses which they builded not, wells which they 
digged not, and fields which they planted not : — the 
whole, most manifestly, withdrawing their example, 
unless the same commands, the same signs and won- 



xxxm 



ders require again what is utterly impossible, and 
therefore not required, under the common providence 
of God. The whole history of mankind, with this 
single exception, itself joining the testimony, con- 
firms our conclusion from general principles and 
European experiments, that immediate and absolute 
emancipation is impossible, and must be doubly im- 
possible in the case of African slavery in the United 
States. 



This confident assurance has not been adopted 
without considering the example of the British West 
Indies, concerning which claims so opposite are urged. 
Instead of attempting to decide upon conflicting tes- 
timony, we have preferred to admit in degree the 
most favorable accounts, and to maintain the alleged 
impossibility notwithstanding. Admitting, then, all 
that is claimed by the most sanguine friends of eman- 
cipation in the West Indies, we assert that its success 
is neither so assured nor so complete as to make it 
an example for the United States if the cases were 
alike ; while they are plainly so unlike, that the re- 
stricted and regulated emancipation in the one, if 
the success were assured and complete, would require 
restrictions and regulations in the other suited to the 
case, and in our belief, the ameliorated slavery which 
this work proposes. 

1. The success of West India emancipation is 
neither so assured nor so complete as to make it 
an example. It is plainly too early in its history 



XXXIV 

to give assurance of success. The Bishop of Bar- 
badoes, expecting final success, admits that there are 
many evils, but claims that two or even three gener- 
ations are needful, before the ill effects of slavery can 
be entirely removed, and the success of emancipation 
be complete.* Be it so. But then, also, it is equally 
right to say, that two or three generations must pass 
before the good effects of slavery can be lost, and the 
ill success of the emancipation be complete. In 
truth, a longer time is required before either the 
good or the evil issues can be decided by experience. 
Though there were at the end of twenty years no 
occasion for misgiving in regard to those whose habits 
of life, and relations to property and skill, were so 
suddenly changed, a longer trial would be needful to 
determine the question. Much more, when there are 
acknowledged evils as well as hopeful appearances, it 
must be impossible to decide whether the one or the 
other be due to the slavery abolished or to the free- 
dom bestowed. If the evils remaining may be re- 
ferred to the influences of slavery, which it requires 
two or three generations to remove, then may any 
hopeful appearances be referred to the influences of 
slavery not yet entirely vanished away. The old 
habits of labor on the one hand, and of capital and 
arrangement on the other, may not yet have lost 
their force, and there may be remaining some of the 
advantages of a regular and regulated industry — of 
due labor and maintenance, preventing the evils 
of "too free a freedom," but giving no assurance 

• Letter dated Feb. 23, 1858, in National Era, Aug. 12. 



XXXV 

of a favorable issue when that force is lost. The 
" train " does not instantly stop when the " power " is 
removed, but goes forward almost as before. Never- 
theless, gravitation and friction are producing their 
gradual effect, and the whole force will be expended 
at last. Admit all the favorable appearances claimed, 
and they give no absolute assurance of a successful 
emancipation. 

Besides the uncertainty of the final issues, the suc- 
cess at its present stage is manifestly too incomplete 
to make a decisive example. Difficulties and evils 
are admitted which break the charm, and throw us 
back upon general principles and the whole experi- 
ence of mankind. Such admissions as those of the 
Bishop of Barbadoes and others, with regard to Bar- 
badoes and the smaller islands where the circum- 
stances are peculiarly favorable, give ground for the 
assertion that even in them the success is too incom- 
plete to become our example. Much more do the 
larger islands, as we understand the admissions of the 
friends of emancipation, give this ground, in greater 
degrees of idleness, improvidence, and vagrancy, fore- 
warning the evils which prevailed in Europe for cen- 
turies, and have issued in the " miserable masses " of 
the nineteenth century, with whatever enhancement 
differences of race and climate may produce. 

That the success of West India emancipation is 
thus incomplete, is confirmed by certain important 
facts which admit of no other explanation. How 
else can we explain the act of the Legislature of 
Jamaica, meeting idleness and vagrancy with such 
provisions as to be objected to by Lord Brougham, 



XXXVI 

m the House of Lords, as " reducing the free negro 
population to slavery." * Laws are provided for oc- 
casions, which, however exaggerated, can never be 
entirely non-existent. There must be idleness and 
vagrancy, with the fear of their increase, or such a 
law could never have been proposed. 

The actual evils and the dreaded danger are im- 
plied, also, in the methods of emancipation proposed 
by other European governments having tropical pos- 
sessions, viz., the retaining some good bonds, instead 
of loosing all, in order that the evils and dangers of 
the British West Indies may be avoided. Thus, the 
Dutch ordinance for liberating fifty thousand slaves 
in Surinam, retains bonds, instead of making emanci- 
pation complete. Says the Kingston Journal, " Upon 
being liberated, the slaves are not to be left uncon- 
ditionally to their own control, and the control of 
those who are ready to take advantage of their igno- 
rance to impose upon them, as in this and the other 
British colonies. At the same time, the former 
slave-holders are protected against the evils arising 
from the want of labor, as the emancipated will not 
become the unrestricted owners of their own time 
and labor. The duties they are to perform are to be 
made known by general orders, but all slaves who 
shall repay to the government the amount paid for 
their freedom, are to be exempt from these orders. 
Another, and by far one of the most wholesome pro- 
visions in the law, is that all who obtain their freedom 
are to contribute on fixed terms towards a fund for 

* London Morning Chronicle, March 23, 1858. 



XXXV11 



repaying the government the cost of their freedom 
— also for religious teaching, education of children, 
nursing of the sick and relief of the poor and aged. 
With us in the West Indies, the absence of such reg- 
ulations at the general emancipation, involved us in 
difficulties, against which at the present time we have 
to fight a hard battle." 

The Danish method at Santa Cruz indicates a like 
caution — requiring, as we understand, an " annual 
affiliation " — the only freedom being the power of 
changing masters and service, without the liberty to 
have no master, or to strike for higher wages. 

It does not answer the argument to ascribe the 
evils acknowledged to the proprietors and not to the 
laborers — to the emancipated masters and not to 
the emancipated slaves. It only gives prominence 
to the necessity of bonds upon property, that labor 
may have due opportunity and provision, while it 
requires, of course, corresponding bonds on labor, 
without which bonds on property would be of no 
avail. If the emancipated masters have used their 
freedom unjustly towards the native-born laborers, 
they were made too free, and should have remained 
under some of their former bonds. But then, of 
necessity, the slaves also were made too free, and 
should have remained under such bonds as would 
enable the masters to fulfil their obligations. 

Neither does it answer the argument to produce 
instances of African advancement in property and 
station ; for the all-important question is, the effect 
upon the mass, and not upon excepted cases. Be- 
sides, a just amelioration could not fail to secure more 
d 



xxxvm 



excepted cases without the evils resulting from the 
whole system of labor and provision abolished. The 
"misery of the masses" in England is not less de- 
plorable, because out of " the poor," " the peasantry," 
" the operatives," individuals sometimes rise to wealth 
and rank. In this case also, wiser measures for the 
masses would no doubt have resulted in more in- 
stances of individual advancement, without the evil 
of wide-spread wretchedness. 

2. But the two cases are plainly unlike, — emanci- 
pation in the West Indies, being with bonds remaining 
and imposed, impossible in the United States, and 
requiring some corresponding bonds suited to our 
different condition. Let the actual bonds of the 
emancipated colonies be briefly stated and duly com- 
pared. 

There is then, first, the physicial condition and re- 
lations. The insular position itself, and in the islands 
where the success is most confidently affirmed, the 
narrow limits, render labor still dependent upon 
property, and property still dependent upon labor, as 
before emancipation, — are bonds upon both, impos- 
sible in our continental position. The climate also 
— within the Tropics — protects African labor from 
European competition, obliges the property in the 
soil to employ the laborers born upon the soil, and 
protects them from the " clear head and strong arm 
and fixed necessities" and determined will of the 
white man : again, an impossible bond even at our 
remotest South — and more and more impossible as 
we approach the North. 

There is, next, the political condition of the eman- 



XXXIX 



cipated colonies : — the British government — direct, 
positive, powerful, prompt, in its colonial administra- 
tion — with its actual and visible array, inspiring a 
sense of unavailing resistance and impossible escape 

— the "arcanum of empire" — always ready to 
exert its reserved power — acting when it does not 
ac t — vigorous when inert — governing when it does 
not govern, by its prestige of promptness and ef- 
ficiency. 

And this prompt and efficient government has no 
need to await the consent of the governed mass, 
unqualified and new to the work of self-government 

— to await the making or the executing of the laws 
by which they may be directed or restrained, as must 
be the case with us if the freed slaves are admitted 
to equal privileges with the white race, — to our 
universal suffrage. The property or rental which 
makes a voter in the British West Indies excludes 
the mass of freed negroes, and leaves them therefore 
under the bonds of law and police which the prop- 
erty of the country — the minority of the whole 
people — may see fit to retain or renew, subject 
only to that royal authority and power which gives 
efficiency to their own. Surely there are needful 
with us some corresponding bonds suited to the fact 
of universal suffrage. 

Moreover, this prompt and efficient government, 
unhindered in its action, has more than its own in- 
herent potency and prestige — it has actual direc- 
tion and restraint, special regulations and provisions, new 
bonds in place of old bonds loosed, to be enforced if 
need be, with its whole array of power, and therefore 



xl 

not likely to need enforcement. Thus, in Antigua, says 
the Superintendent of Police, " The numerical force 
of this district is eleven sergeants and two officers. 
Five of these sergeants are on duty every twenty- 
four hours. One remains in charge of the premises, 
arms, and stores. Four patrol night and day, and 
have also to attend to the duties of the magistrate, and 
the other is employed by me in general patrol duties, 

pointing out nuisances and irregularities A 

due fear of, and prompt obedience to, the authority of 
the magistrates, is a prominent feature of the lower 
orders, and to this [' bond '] I attribute, mainly, the 
maintenance of rural tranquillity."* At Barbadoes, 
also, where emancipation is considered specially suc- 
cessful, there is, as reported by a resident there the 
very last winter, (1858,) "a large and most efficient 
Police, armed with clubs, and recognized by appro- 
priate badges, with a signal post, by means of which 
the whole police force can be concentrated on any 
point, and if needful, sustained by the whole military 
force of the island. Surely the conclusion is just — 
insular position — climate — efficient and prompt 
government, and special regulations and provisions — 
are bonds — and if the ' quasi ' emancipation were 
ever so successful, the example would require in our 
wide-spread continent, temperate climate, universal 
suffrage, and inefficient Police, some corresponding 
bonds — some ' quasi ' slavery." 

These are some of the reasons for our confident 
assurance from general principles and the whole 
course of history, that the absolute and immediate abo- 

• Thome & Kimball, pp. 44, 45. 



xli 

lition of slavery in the United States is impossible — 
the example of the British West Indies notwith- 
standing — that whatever refusal may be required on 
any proposal to enslave anew, nothing can now be 
done but with Christian kindness and wisdom, to re- 
tain those bonds upon property and labor, which are 
manifestly for the well-being of the whole people, of 
the African as well as the European race. The facts 
of slavery are as real and as stubborn as the moun- 
tains, and are not to be brushed away as if they were 
feathers. We can no more place the three millions 
of African slaves in the condition of the Northern 
yeomanry, or of the free whites at large, than we can 
replace them in the savage wilds from which their 
ancestors were torn ; or, than we can do for them in 
one year what Providence has done with ourselves in 
two thousand of European and not African oppor- 
tunity, and two hundred of cis-Atlantic discipline. 
The question is not now whether we shall steal men 
from Africa, and bring them through all the horrors 
of the middle passage into slavery, but how shall we 
meet the actual case of millions of slaves existing and 
increasing in our land. 

To this question there is but one just answer : At 
whatever inconvenience the dominant race, individu- 
ally and socially, must provide for the real well-being 
of the millions committed to its charge, according to 
its individual and social power, with equal good-will 
to the African as the European race — none the less 
to the African because he is enslaved ; none the more 
to the European because he is free* 

* Chapters IV.— VI. 

d* 



xlii 

To this end of well-being is this work devoted. 
Allowing the proper essence of slavery, viz., the being 
held to labor, with the corresponding obligation to 
maintain labor, it requires that an existing institution, 
by which millions eat their bread and the wants of the 
race are provided for, shall not be abolished but re- 
tained ; while all the ills which are not of its essence 
shall be carefully and wisely mitigated or removed, 
and all advantages added which are possible in the 
actual case. 

It is in aid of this high purpose, and not for base 
and wicked ends, that we have invoked a new era* in 
Northern as well as Southern opinion and effort, in- 
stead of the vain and useless struggle to limit and 
abolish on the one hand, or to perpetuate and extend 
on the other ; — a calm, deliberate, and persevering 
attempt to introduce "counsels and methods as ac- 
ceptable to the South as to the North, and as advan- 
tageous to the African as the European race in their 
mysterious relations to each other." 

It is with the same high purpose that we turn now 
from our own country to Europe, and invoke a NEW 
ERA in the opinions and counsels of our Foreign ad- 
visers : — not for evil, but for good — not for wrong, 
but for right ; not for the oppression and ruin of the 
African race, but for their protection and advancement. 
We implore them not to encourage the vain struggle 
of equibalanced sections by appeals to the whole 
United States in a matter for which each separate 
State is alone responsible — not to require of Ameri- 
ca a political consistency of which Europe furnishes 

• Page 120. 



xliii 



no example, and which is forbidden by the condition 
of the people to whom they claim its application ; — 
and lastly, not to demand of the United States of 
America, with its incongenial races, an immediate and 
absolute change, which Europe never made with its 
peoples of one blood, and in the work of ages, failed 
of advantageous results ; and that, instead, they will 
aid us in the only proper work for Christian philan- 
thropists, joining that fellowship of impotence* to 
which we have called our Northern countrymen, as 
their mightiest power for African WELL-BEING : 

• Page 74. 





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